This post was published long before the Mists of Pandara Expansion.
The tips and techniques explained here may be outdated.

Little bucket of suck

Is it just me.. or is it true that the three skills Pallies learn after 60 (ie, in Burning Crusade) are only -sometimes- useful?

Crusader Aura – Nice to be able to ride faster.. but not game-changing in fighting.
Seal of Blood/Seal of Vengance – SoB, nice for Retribution PVPers. SoV… seems like it’d be nice for PVE tanks.. but it’s so undependable I can’t think of anyone who uses it.
Avenging Wrath – Wings. Seriously, wings. Useless for Healing. Too expensive for tanking. Possibly used by Ret or Shockadins.

Not a -huge- bucket of suck.. but it’s definately no Seed of Corruption/Soulshatter.

7 comments to Little bucket of suck

Crusader Aura: great for being first to the summoning stone combined with an epic mount. You still have to wait for someone else to get there before you can start summoning, though – usually the healer. Damn lazy DPS youngsters, grumble…

SoB: When tanking this adds approx -1000 threat per second over seal of righteousness. If alliance are getting seal of blood, I want seal of vengeance to see if it’s useful for tanking.

Angel Wings: Useful to pop just before pulling with the frisbee and dropping a consecrate. It can help with “over-zealous” DPS – especially on boss fights. Use it every time it’s up – unless you need to use/drop divine shield in the first couple of minutes of a fight (fear, etc.). It’d be nice it it increased damage *and* healing so it’d be useful for healers.

And no, I don’t hate DPS – my other main is a warlock.

And yeah, <3 SoC. Now if only I could tankadin and spam SoC at the same time… (I know I can multibox, but they’re on the same account).

I have 2 paladins, and I think SoB and SoV are pretty worthless, but I know people who would kill for the mount speed aura. It certainly helps me do quests and farm. Also, there’s nothing quite like overtaking someone on the opposite faction and getting to a quest mob or resource node they had their eyes on .

And I use wings all the time as a tank, I don’t understand the “too expensive” comment. I rarely run out of mana when I’m tanking. Wings are great for building an early threat lead, keeping your threat high on OT fights like Gruul or VR, or if you are off-tanking in a raid and suddenly need to pick up and hold a loose mob that everyone is already going full bore on. I also use it when I’m farming and I need to take a mob out to get to the node; wings help me burn it fast so there’s less chance of someone swooping in and ninjaing it. Agreed it’s dumb for healers, but I’ve never had any interest in paladin healing.

All of these are more soloing than group talents, especially if you’re a healer.

Avending Wrath is great for soloing, if you’re in your comfort zone its a great way to burn mobs down and pretend you have DPS for a few seconds.

Personally I love Seal of Vengance for longer fights, like soloing the big tree guys in Skettis for their herby skins. Yeah, its conditional on landing those hits, but it rarely falls off with a nice slow two hander, and once its stacked up it beats anything I have as a holy pally for sustained dps. Make sure you judge and reapply as often as you can! I judge Crusader and then start stacking Vengance. Yeah, its very back loaded and takes a while to get going. Don’t use it for short fights, but it’s great once it gets going!

SoV is nice for two reasons. You get more threat with less mana, and its good for “Holy dps” on longer boss fights. Its not an Ã¼ber seal like SoB, but it has its uses. And you can just hit everything once on an AoE pack to give your warlock 1-2 more secs to live. If you have really well geared DPS in your party SoV and Avenging Wrath are needed to hold aggro without gimping their dmg..